Uncategorised
Anxiety Therapy
How negativity can eat you alive…
- Hanging around with people who think and talk this way too. Following people on social media who think and talk this way too.
- Exposing our brains to negative sights and sounds and information. Stuff on the news.
- Stuff on social about people being mean/unhappy/etc
- Gossip about other people.
- Fears. Ours and other peoples. Real and imaginary.
- Remembering past events and using them to predict how the future will go.
- Imagining the future as a worst-case scenario just to keep us safe from disappointment.
Courage is not a feeling, it’s an action
Courage is not a feeling.
It’s an action.
It’s an experience.
It’s a decision.
To be afraid and do it anyway – that’s courage.
And it can be learned
And it can grow, our internal feeling of confidence and courage.
But to learn and grow into your courage, you have to get a wee bit uncomfortable
That’s the way we’re made
That’s the way our brains work.
You see, our brains have changed very little in some respects from those of our prehistoric ancestors, who lived in a time when you were as likely to get munched up by a bear as survive till bedtime. So, our brains have evolved to look for danger always and everywhere. The primitive part of our brain wants us to survive, and it doesn’t care if we thrive. It tells us to keep our heads down, to stay safe, to avoid demanding or unpredictable situations. It’s afraid that if we try new things we will fail. Or look silly. Or get laughed at.
Courage is the conscious and consistent learning to overcome that fear.
Courage is how we thrive.
And anyone can do it.
Actually, everyone must do it, to be happy.
Evolution programmed us to get a reward whenever we go outside our comfort zone – when we feel the fear and do it anyway.
The reward is the feel-good chemical dopamine, which not only makes us feel good when we push through discomfort to do new things, but also helps rewire our brains so that we feel more confident about going out of our comfort zone next time, so we get increasingly courageous and inventive and involved in the world around us, and feel increasingly energised and interested and enthusiastic and BRAVE.
We get addicted to the challenge-stress buzz of dopamine in our systems. This is one chemical addiction we DO want to cultivate!
You see, when we stay small, safe and comfortable, our dopamine levels drop -so we feel restless and unfulfilled and unhappy. We often then look for dopamine hits in unhealthy ways like sugar-munchies or alcohol use or social-media scrolling or excessive anything. This becomes an unconscious pattern so that we get stuck in cycles of negative behaviours, trying to fill the gap in our dopamine levels which are meant to spur us on to new activities, new social interactions, new creative and positive thinking.
Long story short, when we start taking small steps away from what is familiar, safe and unchallenging into creative, unknown, unpredictable terrain it gets a wee bit uncomfortable. Our fear levels rise, our cortisol levels rise, our bodies experience the stress response AND NONE OF THIS IS HARMFUL!
In the short term this is what courage is made of. And when we take those small steps into the unknown – learn a new skill, meet some new people, take up a new activity, do some things differently, we get a surge of dopamine that FEELS ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! And that’s courage.
Want to find out how you can take those first steps into cultivating your true, wild and courageous nature?
Get in touch, I’d love to talk to you.
How to take back Control!
Hypnotherapy can help with Insomnia!
What is insomnia, anyway?
Well, the NHS tell us that insomnia means you regularly have problems sleeping, and that you have insomnia if you regularly:
find it hard to go to sleep
wake up several times during the night
lie awake at night
wake up early and cannot go back to sleep
still feel tired after waking up
find it hard to nap during the day even though you’re tired
feel tired and irritable during the day
find it difficult to concentrate during the day because you’re tired
But it’s just disturbed sleep, right?
There’s very little as frustrating as insomnia. But did you know, it’s got serious long-term health consequences as well? While its best to get a solid 8 hours sleep each night, less than 6 hours sleep can contribute to depression and anxiety, immune system deterioration, circulatory diseases and even Alzheimer’s. Sleep is really important for processing the events of the day too, releasing emotional upheaval and stress so that we can function effectively the following day. So, when you have trouble sleeping, you also have trouble coping with your day-to-day life. Research has shown that after only 4 days without REM sleep, for example – the part of your sleep which processes memories and helps you learn – your ability to concentrate, remember basic information and connect effectively with others is seriously diminished.
Where does insomnia come from?
While we may not be aware of the causes of our sleeplessness, it is often caused by emotional upheaval, anxiety and depression and will often make these conditions worse. For many of us in this fast-paced modern world, our sleep pattern is insufficient to deal with all the stimulus and stress of the day. Our Rapid Eye Movement sleep in particular (REM) is impacted by stress, anxiety and the fast pace of living, and this causes us to have trouble both getting to sleep, and often staying asleep too. The quantity and quality of our sleep suffers when we don’t get enough REM. We can find ourselves waking in the night feeling pretty uptight and unable to get back to sleep again. This only adds to the frustration, anxiety and stress within our bodies and sets us up for more of the same the next day.
The quality of our Deep Sleep, the period of sleep when we regenerate, learn and heal, is also impacted by increasing levels of stress and anxiety, so that after a night of disturbed sleep we can wake in the morning feeling groggy and unrested, without the energy or motivation to deal with the coming day. We can find it hard to get moving in the mornings, and this adds to the growing stress-load we are accumulating through our Sleep Disturbance.
Sadly this can become a vicious cycle – waking up with stress still flooding our bodies because of sleep disruption, we go through the day in a uptight and negative frame of mind, adding further to the stress-load, and so have difficulty sleeping once more.
So it’s really important to see your GP if your sleepless nights are regular or debilitating.
But because the NHS believe that up to one third of the UK population will experience episodes of insomnia or regularly have trouble sleeping, you are definitely not alone.
And the good news is that Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help with sleep problems, too. This science-based and modern therapy can effectively address many of the underlying causes of sleep disturbance. There’s no need to explore or to concentrate on problems or to go into past issues – we move you gently but effectively away from the problems and towards solutions that are the right ones for you, and that will effectively address many of the underlying causes of sleep disorders.
Clients I have worked with have reported an improvement in sleep quality from the very first night, and others have found the progressive nature of the therapy built solid and long-lasting improvements in their sleep patterns. Everyone is different, and results will be different for everyone, but Solution Focused hypnotherapy acts where sleep problems are believed to originate — in the subconscious mind— and so gets to the root of the issue in a gentle, powerful and effective way.
Hypnotherapy uses a very common state of mind called trance – a light and relaxed focused state of attention, to access the subconscious mind. In this state, the brainwaves change, and this boosts our ability to get to sleep and also improves the quantity and quality of our REM sleep each night, so that concentration, work performance, relationships and interactions become so much better. While you relax deeply, either in your own cosy space if online or on my super-comfy recliner chair in Rosie’s Space, I use post-hypnotic suggestion to help your subconscious rebuild the confidence and positivity of mind, the calm and competent state of being, that will allow you to deal with life more effectively, both awake and asleep!
My clients report feeling a wonderful sense of wellbeing, feeling more rested and energised, and experiencing a growing feeling of positivity and power that has allowed them to improve their lives in remarkable ways, finding their way back to happiness, fulfilment and into wonderful and exciting new chapters of their lives, just by engaging with me in their weekly sessions and listening to my special Bedtime Recording every night. While client engagement is essential to get the full benefit of the sessions, I am with you every step of the way to guide, encourage and accompany you on your journey towards a peaceful, restful and regenerative nights sleep. I work with clients from all over the world – just get in touch to find out more. I offer a free discovery call to answer any questions you might have, without obligation, so there’s nothing to lose, and a lot of good quality sleep to gain!
Hypnotherapy is an effective treatment for chronic pain
I have always found Solution Focused Hypnotherapy fascinating but never more so than when I am using it to deal with chronic pain.
Now, chronic pain is not the pain we feel when we touch a hot cooker, or hammer a nail into our finger. Chronic pain, now more commonly referred to as persistent pain, is long-lasting as the name suggests, and is always there. To understand what it is all about, and how Solution Focused hypnotherapy can help, we need first to understand a bit more about pain itself, how it arises in the body and what its function is.
The Painful Truth
Our body contains many pain receptors, or nociceptors, and their job is to warn the body when there is danger or damage to the body through the detection of pressure, heat or other stimulus. These pain receptors are dotted all over our body, but there are large concentrations of them in places where we may need them most often, such as the fingertips and the lips – just in case that cuppa is too hot, or there are nettles in the flowerbed! When a pain receptor is stimulated it sends a message immediately to the brain, and it is the brain that decides what kind of pain it is, and how severe the danger to the body. It then tells the body how to respond, sending a flood of inflammation to the site of pain to prevent further damage, to act as cushioning and protection, as well as sending reaction signals to the extremities, perhaps to snatch our hand away from the nettles or jump backwards away from further danger. So it’s true – all pain starts in the head!
Acute pain, the sharp, localised kind, should resolve with time, as the wound heals or as we move away from the source of danger. Sometimes, however the mind can be so shocked by the acute pain we have experienced that it becomes hypervigilant, checking all the time for further pain, preoccupied with the persistence of any pain so much that it cannot relax, cannot feel healthy. The pain persists and changes from being sharp and localised to being more dull, spread out and coming from deeper within the body.
When this happens the nervous system’s automatic stress response kicks in. We BRACE our bodies in fear and concern against further pain or a worsening of the existing pain, and so the brain responds by making sure that constant inflammation is sent to the site of the original pain and also peripheral areas too, in an effort to protect against further damage. Of course, instead this causes an increase in discomfort and pain to the sufferer. The inflammation prompts the body to feel pain, the individual becomes hyper-aware of the pain but without a solution, as the original stimulus is now long gone, and a vicious cycle ensues. The body is now in sympathetic mode – the full fight or flight stress response- fearful that it is in mortal danger, and unable to relax, rest fully or let go of the possibility that further or increasing pain is on the way. When in this condition, we feel existing pain even more sharply, and the body’s natural self-healing systems cannot activate. Inflammation continues, and self-healing is on pause.
Of course, while in fight or flight mode, the body becomes increasingly stressed, and the individual begins to lose control of other areas of their lives as a result. The damage to emotional and social aspects of our lives when suffering from chronic pain is well known, as is often the impact on our financial and psychological well being as the situation continues.
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can help
An effective treatment which addresses a wide range of issues – emotional, social, psychological, environmental and relational- solution focused hypnotherapy model looks forward – helping clients to take a broad view of the issue rather than focusing backwards on the original cause of the pain, which is frequently long-gone anyway. Hypnotherapy allows clients to regain the control they have lost as the persistent pain developed. Hypnotic trance loosens and frees the focus on pain and so promotes the body’s natural self-healing state to return via the relaxation state or parasympathetic state, so that genuine healing can begin and the vicious cycle of bracing and inflammation can be addressed.
The Toll Gate of Pain
Now, not all pain travels at the same speed. We have different nerve fibres for pain which try to prioritise what we feel so that sudden, sharp and localised pain gets to the brain first, allowing us to take action that can save us from damage, sometimes even saving our lives. These urgent acute pain signals travel along A+ fibres. If our spinal cords were motorways, the A+ fibres are the sports cars, super-fast and speedy. Chronic pain, however, travels along C fibres that are more like trucks, those great big lorries that carry messages from a wide area, from deeper within the body, that don’t get anywhere very fast and don’t get out of the way very easily.
But the spinal cord has the equivalent of a Toll Gate along its length, which lets only one kind of pain through at a time. If you imagine the chronic or persistent pain as a string of long, heavy articulated lorries constantly moving through the toll gates, you get an idea of how unrelenting and life-changing this kind of pain can be. However, fascinatingly, the body can prioritise the kind of pain that gets through, so that if a sudden acute pain should arise in the pain receptors of the skin, such as a burn or an impact, the stream of heavy trucks is stopped, and the sharp pain whizzes through the Toll Gate like a sports car, bringing its message of danger and damage to the brain without delay.
Additionally, we have an even faster vehicle on the spinal motorway, and this is serotonin, the pain relief hormone, which is like a motorbike, capable of super speeds. This can reach the brain faster than pain, and helps to aid our tolerance of it, and even sometimes prevents our feeling it altogether. When we are locked into Sympathetic mode, the flight or flight anxiety mode, the production of serotonin is very low. Our body does not want to relax in case of danger, and so we cut back on the production of serotonin. This means of course that we feel the pain even more sharply, as we are without the natural pain relief our body developed to help us cope.
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy works to re-establish the production of lots and lots of lovely serotonin, by re-establishing our parasympathetic or healing bodily system through trance, relaxation and the significant changes in our thinking. In this way, the natural pain relief levels rise significantly and we feel less chronic pain. When we feel less chronic pain we brace less against the possibility of it worsening, and inflammation reduces. When inflammation reduces, pain reduces. When the brain sense less pain, it relaxes more. When the brain relaxes more, more serotonin can be produced. In this way, the wonderful self-healing cycle of the body is restored, and effective relief from chronic pain ensues.
Why not get in touch and start your journey to self-healing today?